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Saturday, January 25, 2014

Fund lack dims Ecija town’s bid to revert to old name

GEN. TINIO,
Nueva Ecija – The municipal government’s once-determined bid to revert to its old name Papaya has
dimmed due to lack of funds.

Vice Mayor Ferdinand Bote said they
need P2.5 million to push through with a referendum on the proposal to rename
the town. “We have no money to conduct the referendum so this proposal is almost
gone,” Bote said.

Bote was referring to a six-year-old
proposal seeking to have the town renamed into Papaya. The proposal was
contained in a resolution passed in 2008 by the previous municipal council
chaired by Bote and approved by Mayor Virgilio Bote.

The resolution was forwarded to the
Sangguniang Panlalawigan by the Bote administration.

Mayor Bote said that for over 166
years of the town’s recorded existence as a community, its people and those
from other parts of the country and even abroad affectionately refer to the
town as Papaya and its citizens as Papayanos. He said it is sovereign upon the
citizens of Gen. Tinio to adopt a name fitting and appropriate which relates to
“our hearts, customs and traditions, and which embodies our aspirations, hopes
and dreams.”

This town, named after the great Novo
Ecijano General Manuel Bundoc-Tinio, was originally known as Barrio de Papaya
of the nearby town of Peñaranda. In the bell of the old Catholic Church, the
words “Barrio de Papaya 1875” were inscribed as well as in the oldest written
biography of Mamerto Ramos Padolina who was born in the town in 1845.

The barrio was officially declared as
the municipality of Papaya on January 7,1921.

In 1957, then-Nueva Ecija second
district Rep. Celestino Juan sponsored in the Third Congress House Bill 4692
changing the name of the municipality into Gen. Tinio in honor of the general,
who took part in the 1896 Revolution against Spain. On June 20 of that same
year, Papaya was officially renamed General Tinio by virtue of Republic Act
1665.

The proposal to rename this town into
Papaya first came out during a joint executive-legislative meeting on January 14,2008 by the municipal government.
During the meeting, presided by Mayor Bote, development plans were laid out,
including the possible conversion of the town into a city in 10 years.

On October 13,2008, the Sangguniang
Bayan passed Resolution 117 recommending to the SP to revert the town’s name
into Papaya.

The issue stirred a controversy in 2010
after the resolution got stalled in the SP, prompting Mayor Bote to assail his
ally Vice Gov. Jose Gay Padiernos and other SP members, accusing them of
sleeping on the job. He subsequently resigned as president of the provincial
chapter of the League of Municipalities and as a member of the Unang Sigaw
Partido ng Pagbabago of Gov. Aurelio Umali and Padiernos allegedly over the
SP’s foot-dragging on the issue.

Padiernos denied sitting on the
proposal, saying there were processes to be followed in the approval of
resolutions emanating from the respective municipal and city councils in the
province.

Vice
Mayor Bote said m,uch as they would want to push through with the referendum,
one of the requirements by the Commission on Elections before it could revert
to its old name, there was not enough resources to do so. (Manny Galvez)